4 ms·

Lots of controlled movements near the range of success. Within a few iterative steps it will be foolproof. That is why they called it SN9 instead of SNFinal.

• wtuwrtijuwkrt 6y ago
  'Final' would be a weird serial number to assign a vehicle anyway.
• ncmncm 6y ago
  It was poor planning to light engines so close to the ground. Doing it higher up might have enabled re-lighting the third (spare!) engine instead. That's another three expensive Raptor engines used up, maybe unnecessarily. But maybe the point was just to put some fear-of-god into SN10: "See what happens when you don't cooperate? It would be a shame if that happened to you."
  • darig 6y ago
    It looks like they fired the engines more than they needed to, while maintaining a stable control curve. That shows that they had enough power to do the low altitude maneuver. If they had done it higher up, and tweaked things from there they might be stuck using all 3 engines all the time in the future. They needed this data. If they had fired the 2 engines less, they might not be sure they even had enough power and control to ever make it work. Then they would be forced to do more tests before possibly being forced to resort to more engines later.